The Hollando Diet

Brad Edmonds posts about the very real possibility of eating at a fast-food joint thrice daily and still staying fit. (Or, depending on how closely one has been following the patented Hollando Diet method of chummy goading, not becoming any worse.) He writes:

First, if you want to be healthy, stay away from white flour (all grains) and processed sweeteners. These are the two classes of items that load up many useless carbohydrate calories in a hurry; your body turns these to fat if you’re not racing in the Tour de France.

That being said, visit the website of any large-scale fast-food chain. McDonald’s makes no secret of their nutrition information – the nutrition link is on the home page, and nutritional information for all their food products is on a single page. Note that McDonald’s offers salads. Note also that you can order a $1.00 double cheeseburger, and make it healthier by simply not eating the bun. Stay away from the fries, as delicious as they are – they’re the nutritional equivalent of white flour.

If you’re going to eat three meals a day there, get your carbohydrates from perhaps one single bun a day, and load up on the meat, cheese, eggs, and salads (they even offer a fruit salad with walnuts, and the creamy dressing is in a separate container so you don’t have to use it). So not only does McDonald’s offer some fresh, raw fruits and vegetables, but you can get filled three times a day without overloading on calories, period. Certainly you can do it without overloading on simple carbs. (Via LewRockwell.com.)

As a public service to the readers of The Hollando Diet (both of you), presented below are self-provided fast food nutrition facts to encourage edified eating, courtesy of the free market:
McDonald’s
Burger King
Taco Bell
Subway
Denny’s (my first and only time in a Denny’s having been breakfast with Holland at 2 o’clock in the morning in Waco)

Readers, post your favorites!

Finally, I must note that I strongly disagree with Edmonds that one can ever eat “well” at one of these places. How, I ask, is this possible without linen tablecloths and a man who effeciently scrapes bread crumbs therefrom?

Well, I’ve been on dates where the best part is the food. I’ve been on dates where the best part is the conversation. Last night, I was able to enjoy both. I returned to the Northwood Inn, a place where our Hollando Diet group convened upon my graduation from law school. With a wonderful red wine fueling conversation, I chatted with my date as we enjoyed (between the two of us) soup, salad, stuffed pheasant, lobster, bananas foster, and a decadant chocolate mousse. After about four hours, dinner was complete, but after wer left, we went on to play an interesting board/card game with a couple whom I knew from law school days.

Somehow, after dropping her off, I was sufficiently hungry to necessitate four carne guisado tacos from that no-frills, all-hours establishment known as Taco Cabana. At this point, it was 2:00am, and most bars had just closed. Hence long lines were winding their way out of several high-starch food sources. The Cabana even gave me water without my asking. Apparently everyone in line was given water… the other folks had a more compellling need for it.

I blame my latest infraction on the Baylor Law School air conditioner. Because that device broke, my friend, Rory, (a professor at Baylor Law), gave up on working at his office and therefore missed the chance to check his calendar and see our plans for lunch today. Hence, left to my own devices, I wandered through the desert in search of adventure, a la Kane, the Kung Fu guy on television.

Finding other friends in town, we converged upon an establishment doing business as “Chuck’s” or some variant of that name. I simply had to consume a burger referred to as the “4×4″ burger. As a rational person would expect, four patties and four layers of cheese awaited me. When it comes to food, I suffer from a bit of what Shiller terms irrational exuberance. As I inhaled this meat pie, I felt a pang of remorse in light of my recent workout series: yoga, horse riding, and a morning of raking, bagging leaves, and digging for new plants. The first two in that series took my weight down to 178 lbs. Ostensibly I weighed less after yard work. Now… I’ll have to jog in the morning… to break even.

In other news, I have until September 5 to lose as many pounds as possible, with 179 lbs. as a starting point. Naturally, I have waited until the last week to start in ernest. The secretaries against whom I am competing are a wee bit ahead… and the contest is based on a percentage of body weight lost, so they can lose less and win. My work is cut out for me.

It just realized that I’d never, in a year of participating in one, actually done a search for diet blogs. Turns out there are a ton. However, very few of them seem to be by men, and even fewer by groups.

The amazing adventures of dietgirl seems to be one of the most popular, and has lots of links to others.

I also found this discussion interesting. Without going further, I think it summarizes the whole phenomenon quite nicely.

Welcome to the new HollandoDiet.com web site. You’ll notice a few changes from the earlier site. Besides the new, up-to-the-90s .com address, we’ve added a lighter color background. We’ve also added a search function, to help you find that hilarious bit of Sullivania that you just know you read six months ago. And we added post categories, which we aren’t using. And comment spam management features. We’ve only gotten one piece of comment spam so far, but rest assured that we’ve completely over-reacted and now have a wide range of tools available to make sure that it never, ever, happens again.

All the classic entries and comments have been moved over. The only difference is that interpost links in the pre-August 17th messages still point to the old BlogSpot site. This will be a serious problem for exactly nobody.

Who knows what exciting e-commerce opportunities await us? A full ten people have been positively identified as readers of this blog. This will allow us to do market segmenting that is just impossible for more “popular” weblogs.

And now, back to the diet blogging. Except not for me, tonight, since I just had a pizza.

… on my busted shorts, the button of which flew off as my belly happily burst forth from its khakhi prison. But like a good Ahab, I have taken aim at the white whale that is my stomach. I have begun Bikram Yoga (spelling?) which involves a great deal of steam, high temperatures, funny breathing, and unnatural exertion. Perhaps the oddest part of yoga schtick is the choice of terminology. Samstay… chimichanga… naimiste…up dog? I have no idea how to spell this jibberish, but I remain suspicious. I think it involves L. Ron Hubbard and they just haven’t told us yet.

Thanks to the cleverness of Mr. Crawford, jack-of-all-worthwhile-trades, we now have a web presence on a site that is more easily modified, customized, and otherwise improved. I am quite happy with the new site, and I look forward to further postings… and results in my own weight loss regimen.

H.

Congratulations, Will, and happy anniversary. Losing 20 pounds is a healthy accomplishment, in both senses of healthy.

Looking back through the archives, I realize that I missed my own anniversary, which was yesterday. Today is as good a day as any for a report, though, because I have some rather exciting news.

In anticipation of a Hawaii trip this weekend, I weighed myself this morning and, on the same scale and under the same conditions I have maintained throughout the year, the reading was 150 pounds. You will recall that this was my fantasy goal, representing either 35 or 25 pounds lost depending on when you start the clock. We’ll see how sustainable this is. Recently, I’ve been living in the 152-154 range, but I’ve noticed that I tend to hit a target, then bounce up and back for a while, before settling in at the lower weight. (And I first hit 150 last Saturday, though I didn’t report it in anticipation of the pattern recurring, which it did.)

I say this not to brag, but to share my success with the three friends — and the perhaps marginally higher number of readers of this blog — who’ve helped me achieve this. It hasn’t been a Jenny Craig support group, but it sure has been more fun. (I presume, not having been to a Jenny Craig support group. Honest.) Besides, maintaining this weight will require vigilance, with only the occassional extravagant debauchery. Especially considering my personal no-workout rule. In fact, I’m hedging: unlike Will, I have not discarded my old clothes, and indeed often still wear my 36 pants.

I have noticed, however, that my appetite has shrunk. It now takes fewer meals and smaller portions to make me full. And I mean full. Bachelorhood, budgets, and young-professional hours certainly help: I’ve found that the times of greatest risk are those when I have to ape the eating habits of civilized human beings. Such as when I’m at home and my mother says I’m too thin.

Will’s right that people do notice, and not just mothers. An ex-colleague, whom I hadn’t seen in a year, didn’t recognize me at a party in June. I’m pleased with the way I look, though it’s not exactly what I remembered 150 looking like. What’s missing, I suppose, is tone, on account of the whole no-workout thing. I might incorporate some toning exercises, which shouldn’t trigger my asthma.

So here we are, one year on. I intend to continue posting as the news warrants and to encourage the others. Don’t touch that dial.

(Oh, but if you’re a comment spammer, get lost.)

Today marks one year since this post, my initial appearance on the Hollando Diet blog. So join me, and let’s look back.

One year ago I weighed 182 pounds. This morning, under the same conditions on the same scale, I weigh 162 pounds. I’d been at 185 during the Texas Trip that spawned this little undertaking. So 20 pounds down. I’ve been as low as 159 in the last two weeks, although I didn’t stay down there long enough for it to be work reporting here.

I definitely like being a bit thinner. Although I haven’t had much luck getting under 160, I hit the general area a few months ago, and people have noticed. At a trade conference in Washington back in June several former colleagues and business partners needed an extra thirty seconds to recognize me (and not because they’d forgotten what I looked like!).

Now, Matthew won the cigar challenge. I was pretty close on his heels, absolute-time-elapsed wise, but he lost more and did it in less time, even counting for his head start. So, one year in, I think it’s appropriate to officially name him the winner of the Hollando Diet, Phase 1. We haven’t had all four of us in one place since this all began, but perhaps we can plan an early-February awards ceremony.

So where to? I’m not going anywhere. 155 is still out there. Perhaps graduate school will make things easier - in just five days I will have access to MIT’s palatial new gym (which is actually palatial in the resembles-a-palace sense, rather than the ironic-MIT-shouldn’t-have-a-gym sense). On the other hand, I’ll be showing up for class at 8:30, getting home twelve hours later, and have already been assured by many people that there will be no time for exercise. Maybe if I hang out with the plastic surgery students at the Medical School they can do something for me.

Results may be mixed on the Hollando Diet, but, hey, at least we’re solvent.

As reported on Drudge, the proprietor of the most famous contemporary fad diet has filed for bankruptcy.

As July draws to a close, my belt does not. I reminded of my father’s allusion to Jackie Gleason, the comic actor who apparently had two wardrobes. One wardrobe was small and the other was large. So the actor could move seamlessly (he, he) from one wardrobe to another.

I must avoid bad puns in the future.

I have met with disaster. Somehow I weighed in at 183 pounds just days after flirting aggressively with the 177 pound mark. My flirtations were met with a dramatic rebuff. [Yes, I am inviting some smart alec comments for posting.]

What to do? Hmmm… well, eat smaller portions at regular intervals, exercise at the start of the day, and drink water rather than soda. Time has run out, and results must begin. Ah, to start over once more…